Patricia Neal, an Oscar Winner Who Endured Tragedy, Dies at 84

Patricia Neal, the willowy, husky-voiced actress who won an Academy Award for 1963's "Hud" and then survived several strokes to continue acting, died on Sunday. She was 84.

Neal had lung cancer and died surrounded by her family at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard.

"She faced her final illness as she had all of the many trials she endured: with indomitable grace, good humor and a great deal of her self-described stubbornness," her family said in a statement.

Neal was already an award-winning Broadway actress when she won her Oscar for her role as a housekeeper to the Texas father (Melvyn Douglas) battling his selfish, amoral son (Paul Newman).

Less than two years later, she suffered a series of strokes in 1965 at age 39. Her struggle to once again walk and talk is regarded as epic in the annals of stroke rehabilitation. She returned to the screen to earn another Oscar nomination and three Emmy nominations.

The Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center that helps people recover from strokes and spinal cord and brain injuries is named for her in Knoxville, where she grew up.

"She never forgot us after she went to Hollywood," said 85-year-old Bud Albers, who graduated with Neal from Knoxville High School in 1943, and still lives in the city.

Whenever she was in town, a bunch of her friends would always get together and have dinner, Albers said. She had wanted to be there next week for a golf tournament that benefits the center, he said.

"She was so courageous," he said of her battling back from her illnesses and losing her 7-year-old daughter to measles in 1962. "She always fought back. She was very much an inspiration."

In her 1988 autobiography, "As I Am," she wrote, "Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison."

Neal projected force that almost crackled on the screen. Her forte was drama, but she had a light touch that enabled her to do comedy, too.

She had the female leads in the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead," the classic 1951 science fiction film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and Elia Kazan's 1957 drama "A Face in the Crowd."

She made a grand return to the screen after her strokes in 1968, winning an Oscar nomination for her performance in "The Subject Was Roses."

In 1971, she played Olivia Walton in "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story," a made-for-TV film that served as the pilot for the CBS series "The Waltons." It brought her the first of her three Emmy nominations.

"You can't give up," she said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. "You sure want to, sometimes."

In 1953, she married Roald Dahl, the British writer famed for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach" and other tales for children. They had five children. They divorced in 1983 after she learned he was having an affair with her best friend and he died in 1990.

Even before her illnesses, her life often was touched by misfortune. Besides her daughter's death, an infant son nearly died in 1960 when his carriage was struck by a taxi. Neal also suffered a nervous breakdown, and had an ill-fated affair with Gary Cooper, who starred with her in "The Fountainhead."

"I lived this secret life for several years. I was so ashamed," she told The New York Times in 1964.

The strokes at first paralyzed her and impaired her speech. After recovering, she limped and had bad vision in one eye. A 1991 biopic about her travails starred Glenda Jackson as Neal.

Her family said her dedication to the rehab center and advocacy for stroke sufferers was a great source of hope for them and their families and a "constant inspiration to our family."

In 1999, she starred in her first feature film in 10 years in the title role in Robert Altman's "Cookie's Fortune." She said at the time that movie offers had been scarce in recent years.

"I don't quite understand it, but nobody calls me and nobody wants me. But I love to act." Neal was born in a mining camp in Packard, Ky., the daughter of a transportation manager for the South Coal & Coke Co. After leaving Knoxville, she attended Northwestern University and then struck out for Broadway.

Her Broadway credits included "A Roomful of Roses," "The Miracle Worker" (as Helen Keller's mother, Kate) and a revival of Lillian Hellman's drama "The Children's Hour."

She made her screen debut in 1949's "John Loves Mary," that also starred Jack Carson and Ronald Reagan.

Her three Emmy nominations were all for roles in notable drama specials: Besides "The Homecoming," they were "Tail Gunner Joe," a 1977 drama about Sen. Joe McCarthy, and a version of the tragic World War I story "All Quiet on the Western Front."

Among Neal's children is Tessa Dahl, who followed in her father's footsteps as a writer. Tessa Dahl's daughter is the model and writer Sophie Dahl.

Friends said her sorrows gave her an inner toughness that brought new power to her screen roles.

"I don't lie down. ... I'm fightin' all the way," she said in 1999.

The statement from Tessa, Theo, Ophelia and Lucy Dahl and others said that the night before her death, Neal told them, "I've had a lovely time."

Lynn Redgrave, Actress and Playwright, Dies at 67

Lynn Redgrave, an introspective and independent player in her family's acting dynasty who became a 1960s sensation as the unconventional title character of "Georgy Girl" and later dramatized her troubled past in such one-woman stage performances as "Shakespeare for My Father" and "Nightingale," has died. She was 67.

Her publicist Rick Miramontez, speaking on behalf of her children, said Redgrave died peacefully Sunday night at her home in Connecticut. Children Ben, Pema and Annabel were with her, as were close friends.

"Our beloved mother Lynn Rachel passed away peacefully after a seven year journey with breast cancer," Redgrave's children said in a statement Monday. "She lived, loved and worked harder than ever before. The endless memories she created as a mother, grandmother, writer, actor and friend will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Our entire family asks for privacy through this difficult time."

Redgrave was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003 and underwent chemotherapy.

Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of her older brother, Corin Redgrave.

The youngest child of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn Redgrave never quite managed the acclaim - or notoriety - of elder sibling Vanessa Redgrave, but received Oscar nominations for "Georgy Girl" and "Gods and Monsters," and Tony nominations for "Mrs. Warren's Profession," "Shakespeare for My Father" and "The Constant Wife." In recent years, she also made appearances on TV in "Ugly Betty," "Law & Order" and "Desperate Housewives."

"Vanessa was the one expected to be the great actress," Lynn Redgrave told The Associated Press in 1999. "It was always, 'Corin's the brain, Vanessa the shining star, oh, and then there's Lynn.'"

In theater, the ruby-haired Red grave often displayed a sunny, sweet and open personality, much like her ebullient offstage personality. It worked well in such shows as "Black Comedy" - her Broadway debut in 1972 - and again two years later in "My Fat Friend," a comedy about an overweight young woman who sheds pounds to find romance.

Tall and blue-eyed like her sister, she was as open about her personal life as Vanessa has been about politics. In plays and in interviews, Lynn Redgrave confided about her family, her marriage and her health. She acknowledged that she suffered from bulimia and served as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. With daughter Annabel Clark, she released a 2004 book about her fight with cancer, "Journal: A Mother and Daughter's Recovery From Breast Cancer."

Redgrave was born in London in 1943 and despite self-doubts pursued the family trade. She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, and was not yet 20 when she debuted professionally on stage in a London production of "A Midsummer's Night Dream." Like her siblings, she appeared in plays and in films, working under Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier as a member of the National Theater and under director/brother-in-law Tony Richardson in the 1963 screen hit "Tom Jones."

"Before I was born, my father was a movie star and a stage star," the actress told the AP in 1993. "I was raised in a household where we didn't see our parents in the morning. We lived in the nursery. Our nanny made our breakfast, and I was dressed up to go downstairs to have tea with my parents, if they were there."

True fame caught her with "Georgy Girl," billed as "the wildest thing to hit the world since the miniskirt." The 1966 film starred Redgrave as the plain, childlike Londoner pursued by her father's middle-aged boss, played by James Mason.

Dismissed by critic Pauline Kael as a false testament to free thinking, the movie was branded "cool" by moviegoers on both side of the Atlantic and received several Academy Award nominations, including one for Redgrave and one for the popular title song performed by the Australian group The Seekers.

"All the films I've been in - and I haven't been in that many attention-getting films - no one expected anything of, least of all me," Redgrave said in an AP interview in 1999.

"Georgy Girl" didn't lead to lasting commercial success, but did anticipate a long-running theme: Redgrave's weight. She weighed 180 pounds while making the film, leading New York Times critic Michael Stern to complain that Redgrave "cannot be quite as homely as she makes herself in this film.

"Slimmed down, cosseted in a couture salon, and given more of the brittle, sophisticated lines she tosses off with such abandon here, she could become a comedienne every bit as good as the late Kay Kendall," he wrote.

Films such as "The Happy Hooker" and "Every Little Crook and Nanny" were remembered less than Redgrave's decision to advocate for Weight Watchers. She even referenced "Georgy Girl" in one commercial, showing a clip and saying, "This was me when I made the movie, because this is the way I used to eat."

At age 50, Redgrave was ready to tell her story in full. As she wrote in the foreword to "Shakespeare for My Father," she was out of work and set off on a "journey that began almost as an act of desperation," writing a play out of her "passionately emotional desire" to better understand her father, who had died in 1985.

In the 1993 AP interview, Redgrave remembered her father as a fearless stage performer yet a shy, tormented man who had great difficulty talking to his youngest daughter.

"I didn't really know him," Redgrave said. "I lived in his house. I was in awe of him and I adored him, and I was terrified of him and I hated him and I loved him, all in one go."

Redgrave credited the play, which interspersed readings from Shakespeare with family memories, with bringing her closer to her relatives and reviving her film career. She played the supportive wife of pianist David Helfgott in "Shine" and received an Oscar nomination as the loyal housekeeper for filmmaker James Whale in "Gods and Monsters." She also appeared in "Peter Pan," "Kinsey" and "Confessions of a Shopaholic."

On stage, she looked at her mother's side of the family in "The Mandrake Root" and "Rachel and Juliet." In 2009, her play "Nightingale" touched upon her health, the life of her grandmother (Beatrice Kempson) and the end of her 32-year marriage to actor-director John Clark, who had disclosed that he had fathered a child with the future wife of their son Benjamin.

"Redgrave, a cancer survivor, sits at a desk ... and works from a script because of what has been described as an unspecified medical ailment - but not a recurrence of cancer - requiring immediate treatment. It doesn't affect her touching, beautifully realized performance," the AP wrote last year.

"And reading gives the evening an almost storybook quality in which it seems as if the actress, buoyed by a radiant smile, has gathered a few good friends to hear her reminisce about this formidable woman - mother of Rachel, mother-in-law of Michael and grandmother to Lynn, Vanessa and Corin."

Lynn Redgrave is survived by six grandchildren, her sister Vanessa, and four nieces and nephews.

A private funeral with be held later this week.